Canada’s planned deployment of a battlegroup to Eastern Europe to confront a newly belligerent Russia goes a long way toward overturning the narrative that sees Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as soft when it comes to dealing with Moscow. It also highlights his government’s ability to adapt — to bolster its perceived weaknesses on foreign and defence policy matters.

The details will be announced at the NATO summit in Warsaw this weekend, but it’s widely expected that Canada will send some 500 soldiers to Latvia, joining NATO allies — Germany, Britain and the U.S. — that are deploying battalions elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc.

At a G-20 meeting in 2014, Harper famously told Putin, who had approached with his hand extended: “I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to say to you — You need to get out of Ukraine.” Russia had invaded and annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea that year and had covertly sent troops to stoke rebellion elsewhere in the country.

Forced to choose between a public snub from a Canadian prime minister and 500 Canadian soldiers on his doorstep, it’s a safe assumption Putin would pick the former. And yet it’s Harper — who sent fighter jets and troops to Eastern Europe in response to Russian aggression — who was labeled a war monger, while Trudeau still reaps praise for ushering in a new era of supposedly pacific Canadian foreign policy. He’s done so while making decisions that are not radically different from what Conservatives might have done — decisions that occasionally are quite hawkish.

It’s hard to know whether this is due to a larger Liberal strategy to broaden the party’s appeal, or to the party scrambling to compensate for earlier blunders.

On Russia, for example, this troop deployment follows a Liberal decision to break a pre-election commitment to pass a Canadian version of the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which would have sanctioned Russians involved in human rights violations. That was a morally weak reversal. But a Canadian battlegroup in Latvia is a convincing counterbalance.

On substantive issues, such as votes in the United Nations, the Liberals’ approach to security differs little from that of their Conservative predecessors. The topic has lost its potency as a wedge political issue.

Regarding the so-called Islamic State, which has taken over large chunks of Iraq and Syria, the Liberals ran for office on a pledge to end Canada’s combat mission against it, including an airstrike campaign launched by the Conservatives. They were never able to offer a coherent explanation as to why that was necessary, and were rightly pilloried as a result. But in February the Liberals announced a greatly expanded mission against Islamic State that involves tripling the number of special forces trainers on the ground in northern Iraq.

It’s worth noting Dion’s response in an April House of Commons committee meeting when he was asked when Canada might withdraw its troops from Iraq.

“We hope that (Iraq and Syria) become stable again and capable of moving toward becoming pluralistic democracies. But we’re far from that,” he said.

“In the meantime, we have a commitment of several years to honour. Our goal isn’t only to abolish this horrible terrorist group, but also to ensure that it does not re-emerge later through another group and under another name. So we need to create conditions conducive to lasting stability and peace.”

Adjusting for style, this speech isn’t all that different from the one Harper delivered to troops in Kandahar in 2006, when he vowed that Canadians don’t “cut and run.”

The Liberals say they won’t quickly abandon Iraq. Canadian trainers are calling in airstrikes, Canadian planes are scouting targets, and Canadian officers are on the ground in Baghdad working with the Iraqi military and other members of the U.S.-led international coalition. The Trudeau government still publicly clings to the fiction that this isn’t a combat mission. But now those absent CF-18s don’t look like such a big deal, and the Liberals are less vulnerable as a result.

On Israel, Trudeau has highlighted his willingness to criticize its government — a contrast with Harper, whose professed support for the state was near total. But on substantive issues, such as votes in the United Nations, the Liberals’ approach differs little from that of their Conservative predecessors. The topic has lost its potency as a wedge political issue.

There is one significant defence-related problem the Liberals have created for themselves that will not be easy to solve. During the campaign, Trudeau said Canada would not purchase F-35 Lightning fighter jets to replace the aging fleet of CF-18s.

Like Trudeau’s promise to stop bombing Islamic State, it was a promise driven mostly by electoral politics. In the public’s eye, the F-35s had become linked to the Conservatives — but there’s a good chance the aircraft would win an impartial open competition.

Unlike Trudeau’s promise to put an end to the airstrikes, however, there’s no obvious way Trudeau can compensate for his mistake other than by acknowledging it, holding a fair competition and accepting the results.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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Author

Michael Petrou is a journalist, historian and non-resident fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. His latest book — Is This Your First War? Travels Through the Post-9/11 Islamic World — won the Ottawa Book Award for non-fiction.